Well Rockarts tagged me (and no… not in that way). So now I have to write 5 things you may not know about me.

1. I am a big punk fan. If you have ever seen SLC punk I am kind of like Mike. The geeky guy whos right in the middle of the pit. Punk is a great scene with some of the nicest people I have ever met. If you are going to go in the pit though be prepared to loose 1 or more shoes. :D

2. I have been a geek 2/3rds of my life. The other 1/3 I was learning to walk. I started programming basic on my apple II (which I still have)

3. I think of myself as a very introverted person even though none of my friends would agree with that statement. I will ask them if I ever leave the house.

4. I had dreadlocks for over a year of my life. Some days I miss them… other days I am glad I don’t get asked for drugs 10 times a day.

5. Politics / state of the world / environment is what keeps me up at night. I think a lot about all the crap in the world and try to think of ways to fix it that will actually work. So far I have come up with nothing (thanks beer for destroying my plans to save the world)

I will now tag Tim Goodwin and Shane Courtrille.

On the first day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Jean Paul Boodhoo on Tee-Dee-Dee

On the second day of christmas
edmug gave to me
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the third day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the fourth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the fifth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the sixth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the seventh day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the eighth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Christina Grey on Slickrun
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the ninth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Justice Grey on many tools
Christina Grey on Slickrun
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the tenth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Steven Rockarts on Rhino (nooooooooooo… not my mom)
Justice Grey on many tools
Christina Grey on Slickrun
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the eleventh day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
A great code camp
Steven Rockarts on Rhino
Justice Grey on many tools
Christina Grey on Slickrun
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

On the twelth day of christmas
Edmug gave to me
Rob Windsor on WCF
A great code camp
Steven Rockarts on Rhino
Justice Grey on many tools
Christina Grey on Slickrun
More J.P. on MVP
Donald Belcham talkin about my generation
Richard Campbell on Boolean Queries
Jean-Luc David on ATLAS
James Kovaks on Kerbose
Rod Paddock on VS Templates
and a J.P. boodhoo on TDD

(I know… I need a day job)

At the Vista talk there was some mention about the new virtualization technologies added in. Basically what happens is that if a program tries to write to a protected area (such as the program files or windows directory) the file actually gets written to the current users profile directory (i.e. c:\documents and settings\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program) instead. This is nice as it protects code from overwriting others files, blowing up the registry (yes the registry is virtualized as well in vista), adds per user files so that another user can not overwrite your changes, and adds some security to prevent people from reading your info. On the other hand people are saying “Where are my files? Its output dir is c:\program files”.

So should programs really output / store data in protected areas? Well when you put it that way of course not so bad code! So what should you do? Prompt the user where to save info / config (if they have perms to that directory), write to their profile by default, or use a little thing called isolated storage.

Isolated storage is one of those cool things hidden in .NET I had not heard about until Bristowe said this is how you should be storing config / assembly related files and has been arround since .NET 1.0. Isolated storage is basically another type of file stream that internally delegates the files to the proper location so the developer does not have to worry about pathing. A really cool apparently (I have not verified this) is that by using isolated storage you can save files even if your application does not have rights to the filesystem.

As I said I just discovered this but found this great article on isolated storage for those of us who were oblivious to this technology.